There were stands of spruce-beer-and how cool | pomp and circumstance, where boys from fourand pungent and delicious it was!-for two cents teen to twenty gently studied a little Latin and a glass. There were cords of taffy, if any body less Greek, and ogled a choice selection of isoswanted it; and the boy with fopensappenny in celes triangles. There was something said to his pocket-for such was the familiar pronuncia- the Seniors of chemistry and physics. But the tion of the thin little coin, long since vanished, college scheme was impregnable. Its manageknown as fourpence-ha'-penny-was a happy boy ment, generally rurally clerical, was the most and a rich. He, and he only, knew what a cent rigid system of conservatism known. There would buy, and none so well knew "what his six were one or two hundred scholars housed in the cents would do." college halls, which was the fine name given to the rude old barracks which generations of boys had whittled and battered, while generations of rats and mice disputed possession. They were little lodges of students, and college ways and phrases and degrees were a kind of harmless freemasonry. The two maxims of the college were tradition and routine, and the protest of the American genius against them was therefore inevitable. Presently the procession came. If you had been at the college grounds you had seen the busy assembling, the meeting and greeting of old friends, and the gliding about of figures in the silken gown, the graduates of the day. Black was the only wear-black dress-coat and trowsers, and the great American black satin waistcoat. And at last the chief marshal-a youth with a parchment baton-stepped aside, and called out that the procession would now form. First came the younglings, the neophytes-the fairfaced boys who had just entered Freshmen. Dear little men! with smooth cheeks and candid eyes and hopeful, generous hearts, full of wonder and expectation at the great future already beginning to unroll. To-day the Easy Chair passes many of those remembered faces. They are smooth no longer, and the beautiful bloom is gone gone, but only inward, let us hope; the rind is rougher, perhaps, but the juice at the core is sweet as ever, and unspoiled. If not, which of their honors would they not give that it might be so? A success which costs the curdling of one drop of that sweetness is not a success worth having. That protest has come and conquered; and the two facts most observable in them to-day are the generosity of gifts to them and their wider and resolute expansion to the spirit of the time. The wonderful impulse and extension of recent scientific research and discovery are no longer to be barred by the college. Henceforth a youth is to know the present state of science even if he does go to college; and he is to enjoy the literature as well as the grammar of the Greeks and the Romans. Inevitably the old traditions that had been most intrenched and sacred were the first assailed. Sansculotte " goes for" the king. The reform demands of Latin and Greek what they have to say why sentence should not be pronounced, while, without, the spirit of the age But here are the Sophomores, Freshmen of complacently sharpens the edge of the axe. But yesterday, falling in. Then come the Juniors, Sansculotte does not have his way, and a very and then, silken-gowned and treading on air, the wretched way it would be if he could. That proud, important Seniors; Venetian embassa- which conquers and is conquering is the gracious dors not more stately; kings going to their cor- spirit of catholic or universal cultivation-the onation of no loftier mien. Receding then to- generous scholarship which asks truth and beauward the earlier years of graduation, the ranks ty only, but asks them and seeks them every of the alumni follow, thinner and grayer, until a where. The more languages a man hath the few venerable men close the line. Then follow more man is he, says Bacon; and what is every the professors, in gowns professorial; and last of branch of knowledge but a language? The narall the august president, in his robes, and wearing row cynicism which would ask of a university the square academic cap-a portly, striking fig- that it should teach only agricultural chemistry ure, of serious and weighty mien, an abbot or or only applied mechanics is the same old monksuperior. The blaring band goes before, and as ish tradition in a form more repulsive. In the in narrow ranks of two and two the scholastic old day, whoever had Latin and Greek had at procession descends the hill, how pleasant and least the key to the sciences of whose literature familiar are the tunes to which it moves! They those languages were the tongue; and this is also haunt the air still, although the musicians play true, that the most generous spirit of scholarship, no longer, and many and many of these scholars that which opens wide the gates that the king march no more. Often now as the Easy Chair, of glory of the new time may come in, is the changed in all but heart, slowly mounts the hilly product of the college itself. The word humanstreet which arching elms embower, it hears ities was well applied in Old England to the simthe inspiring strains of those old days, and re-ple, early studies, because study and learning are stores to their places in that advancing line the in their very nature humanizing. The universiforms of youth and hope and proud ambition, ty is reformed by a spirit which the university the ruling figures of that commencement pageant. How can it believe that younger eyes, which see nothing behind the visible procession, which are not touched by the tender glamour of memory, truly enjoy all the possibilities of the spectacle? Where to such observers is that romantic melancholy which is of the essence of the highest joy? But how entirely the college and its general relation to our society have been changed since the days of which the Easy Chair is garrulous! Then the monkish traditions survived. The college was a higher school, a school of more has itself bred. Its forms were narrow, perhaps, its methods close and conservative; but minds nurtured upon these fair humanities, which no form nor method can wholly obscure, have seen the wisdom of enlarging the college scope, and making the university the cherishing mother of all knowledge. It is the children of Harvard who have renewed the youth and vigor of their parent with more than "Medea's wondrous alchemy." And Yale will be recuperated by the vision within and not without her charmed pale. In the West the Uni versity of Michigan, and deep in Central New York the Cornell University, are moulded by scholars to the newer time. Their conviction, indeed, accords with those who were not collegebred. Mr. Cornell, with exhaustive comprehension, said, "I would found a university in which any one may obtain any kind of knowledge." But it was because President White, a son of Yale and a professor of Michigan, was inspired by the same feeling, with the accomplishments of the scholar and the executive faculty of a master, that the university became practicable. And one thing remains to do, which is being swiftly done, and that is to extirpate sectarianism from the college. Harvard, the oldest and chief of our schools, is virtually unsectarian; Cornell, the youngest, is absolutely so. Science, scholarship, letters, are of no sect; they are of all sects, because they are of humanity itself. To insist upon the sectarian organization and control is to insist upon binding the infant with an iron cord. It may not kill him, but it will destroy his necessary freedom. No gyved infant grows into the perfect Apollo. Upon the stone seat which Professor Goldwin Smith has placed under a tree of friendly shade upon the campus, or college ground, at the Cornell University there is an inscription which he wrote carved in stone"Above all nations is humanity." It is a text of depthless significance, of which the pure and hopeful young minds that gather there will for a hundred years supply the improvement. And happy they who, as they sit wistfully meditating in that tranquil air, shall resolve that when they found a university they will carve in imperishable gold upon its gates, "Above all sects is truth." WE 66 Editor's Literary Record. RELIGION AND THEOLOGY. E have looked with interest for what is popularly but unfortunately designated the 'Speaker's Commentary," but is, in the edition before us, simply entitled Holy Bible with Commentary. Its popular title is derived from the fact that it grew originally out of a suggestion made by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Hon. J. E. Denison. To its composition a number of the bishops and clergy of the Anglican Church have contributed, five different writers uniting to make this first volume on the Pentateuch. At the time of our writing only the English edition has yet reached the public; but the American edition, to be issued by Charles Scribner and Co., is promised in September. We do not understand that there is to be any American editor, or that the American edition will be any thing else than a simple reprint of the original work. The object of the work is stated in the preface to be, "to provide a Commentary on the Sacred Books in which the latest information might be made accessible to men of ordinary culture." It is a layman's commentary, and by its adaptation to the wants of the laity its value must be tested. Measuring it by this test, we find in it certain strongly marked qualities which may be said in some sense to be characteristic of it. It is modern. The questions of the composition of Genesis (whether by one writer or by many, whether from one source or compiled from different documents), of the scientific accuracy of the account of the creation, of the origin and antiquity of man, of the nature and extent of the deluge, are all impartially stated and fairly argued. The authors are familiar with the latest rationalistic hypotheses, and do not fear to acquaint the reader with them; nor is it possible for one to use the Commentary with any care and be ignorant of the problems which modern criticism has raised. It is in spirit libcral and evangelical. It maintains the substantial accuracy of the history of the creation, yet maintains that "a miraculous revelation of scientific truths was never designed by God for man." It insists that as yet there is no evidence of any greater antiquity of man than the Bible presupposes, yet claims that, "even if it could be made probable that man is only an improved ape, no physiological reason can touch the question whether God did not, when the improvement reached its right point, breathe into him a living soul, a spirit which goeth upward when bodily life ceases. It insists on the historical verity of the scriptural account of the deluge, yet maintains as a probable doctrine that "only that portion of the earth into which mankind had spread was overwhelmed by water." It is wisely arranged upon a plan borrowed from Dean Stanley's "Commentary on the Corinthians." The notes are annotations simply—i. e., they are confined to the explanation of the text. But additional discussion of questions raised, less by a single verse than the general passage, are scattered through the book in additional notes. Thus beyond most commentaries it affords the reader not only a verbal criticism but also a comprehensive survey of many of the points brought before the mind by the sacred narrative itself. The style is clear, and, on the whole, popular. The chief defect of the work lies, however, in a somewhat too scholastic tone. It is exceedingly difficult for scholars thoroughly familiar with the Greek and Hebrew text, and the endless but unprofitable discussions which have been waged upon it, not to assume in their readers a larger knowledge of, and a greater interest in, those controversies than they really possess. The editors have not always remembered that their pages were for "men of ordinary culture." Still, if they have sometimes fallen into the fault of excessive scholasticism, they have done so more rarely than most of their predecessors. And while the controversialist and the biblical student will miss something of the elaboration which belongs to Lange, the ordinary reader will find in this new work a far more useful, because a less minute, and a more practical interpretation of the Word, and an interpretation which, as it is the product of the English mind, so is more easily apprehended by the English student. If the other volumes shall fulfill the promise of the first one, the English public will owe to Speaker Denison, and the American public to Scribner | aspects of the various races and nationalities of and Co., no small gratitude for a work which can hardly fail to prove a valuable addition to our biblical literature. It is one tendency of the age to produce a certain class of men who, though they necessarily belong to some sect, are in no sense sectarian; who disregard creeds because they can do their work better without them; who, when in the ministry, speak directly to the experience of men without employing that which appears to be the necessary instrument of most preachers-formulated doctrine. No church has a monopoly of this class, to which belong alike Father Hyacinthe in the Catholic, and Robertson in the Episcopalian, Mr. Beecher in the Congregational, and Robert Collyer in the Unitarian churches. Those who think that there can be no Christianity which is not crystallized in a creed, will think that Mr. COLLYER's last volume of sermons, The Life That Now Is (H. B. Fuller) is a dangerous book, or, at least, that it is a defective one; but those who believe that, however desirable the modern formulas of belief, yet Christianity may be as truly manifested without a creed in the nineteenth century as it was in the first, will find enjoyment and helpfulness in these discourses, even though they may not always agree with them. The number of Americans is so very small who accept the Elisha on whom Theodore Parker's mantle has fallen-JOHN WEISS-as their prophet, that it seems a little like assumption for him to entitle the exposition of his views American Religion (Roberts Brothers). Of the theology of his book all we have to say in these pages is, simply, that a philosophy which denies special inspiration, miracles, prayer, and atonement is not the embodiment of American religious doctrine, and we should hope that the spirit which travesties the faith of at least half the nation, as Mr. Weiss does in his essay on prayer, is not a fair representative of American religious spirit. -Dr. SHEDD's Sermons to the Natural Man (Charles Scribner and Co.) are thoughtful and scholarly, but so technically theological that they have little chance of being read except by theologians. If they ever reach the "natural man" at all, it will only be by trickling down in sermons through other minds less scholastic than Dr. Shedd's, and more capable of clothing them in popular forms.-The Appletons have rendered a good service to theological literature in republishing Dr. STROUD's treatise on the Physical Cause of the Death of Christ. While the primary object of the author is to show by arguments, both physiological and scriptural, that Christ died not from the physical tortures of the cross, but from a rupture of the heart caused by mental agony, he incidentally throws a great deal of light on other points connected with the crucifixion. —JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE'S Ten Great Religions (James R. Osgood and Co.) is not so much an "essay in comparative theology" as a contribution to its materials. The book describes, without prejudice, and yet not without an avowed partiality for Christianity as a supernatural religion, the other great religions of the world. We know of no work which describes so clearly, and, despite some inaccuracies, or rather erroneous estimates, so fairly, the religious mankind, ancient and modern. The failure to give any description of fetichism is a serious omission.-One who wishes his thinking done for him will find it pretty well done in Dr. BALDWIN's treatise on The Model Prayer (Lee and Shepard). And yet we can not escape the impression that if the author had given in a book one quarter of the size hints of thoughts instead of such elaborate amplification, and had left his readers to meditate a little for themselves on the Lord's Prayer, instead of doing all their meditation for them, he would have rendered them a more profitable as well as a more pleasing serv ice.-One of the literary results of the union of the Old and New Schools in the Presbyterian Church is the Presbyterian Reunion Memorial Volume (De Witt C, Lent and Co.). It is a valuable addition to the ecclesiastical history of the country, but would be a great deal more valuable if its publisher had secured the services of one competent editor, instead of publishing a volume composed by a dozen different authors, working apparently independently and without mutual conference.-The aim of Mr. SAMUEL G. GREEN's Life of Christ upon the Earth (American Tract Society, Boston) is capital. We wish we could say as much for the execution. The purpose of the writer is to furnish the children what so many are attempting to furnish to their parents-a connected biography of Jesus Christ. The result is a book which the mothers will commend as admirable, and the children will condemn as dull. The story of Christ's life is not new to any tolerably well educated child, and it is not made interesting by prosaic homilies upon it. Something of that personal magnetism and that wealth of illustration which characterizes Dr. Newton's writings is essential to give such a book its hold upon the children, and both are wholly wanting in Mr. Green's treatise. BIOGRAPHY AND TRAVELS. WE have hesitated somewhat whether to class Mr. BEECHER'S Life of Jesus, the Christ (J. B. Ford and Co.), as theology, poetry, or biography, and have put it under the latter head, not so much because it is biography as because it is not either theology or poetry. It is nearly four years since Mr. Beecher first definitely formed the purpose to write this book, and over three years since he commenced its execution. During that time he has kept steadily at his work, with an assiduity which has surprised those who credit Mr. Beecher with much erratic genius but with little patient application. He has meanwhile added the editorship of a religious paper to his pastoral labors, and served, as heretofore, the office of popular orator on all sorts of religious and political occasions. But the work on this book, though sometimes intermitted, has gone steadily on; and the public, who had begun to wonder whether the promise was ever to be fulfilled, have in its half fulfillment a strong assurance of its final completion. The book itself shows evidently that the delay has been caused not by idleness, but by industry. There is very little geographical or archæological information directly afforded. There are no discussions of disputed points concerning these trappings of history. The author passes them all by as matters of secondary importance, if not of indiffer ence. There is very little of that graphic pic-| the declaration that the Sermon on the Mount turing of ancient life which makes Renan's romance as fascinating as it is false. But there is abundant evidence scattered through these pages that Mr. Beecher has acquainted himself with these questions and with this external life, and that he has abstained from imparting the results of his study only because it would interfere with his purpose, which appears to be to unfold the interior life of Christ and the spiritual meaning of his teachings. is not original, no epitome of Christianity, but only "a criticism of the received doctrine.' Theologically, we should ourselves dissent from some of Mr. Beecher's positions. But, despite the critics, both literary and theological, Mr. Beecher's "Life of Christ" will carry the truths of Christianity to many a mind, and the power of Christianity to many a heart, and will give new, clear, fresh, and striking views to many a reader of the character, the teaching, and the mission of Jesus, the Christ. The work is handsomely illustrated. Only one volume is yet ready; there are to be two. It is to be sold, we believe, only by subscription. DR. STOW would hardly have consented, if he could have had aught to say about it, to the motto title which Dr. STOCKBRIDGE has given to his Memoir of the Life and Correspondence of Rev. Baron Stow, D.D. (Lee and Shepard). That he was a model pastor is very probable. To claim that he was "the model pastor" is to provoke criticism of the editor, and to invite criticism of the subject of the biography. The Memoir itself has nothing except the interest in Dr. Stow to distinguish it from other works of its class. It is, as its author frankly confesses in his preface, a compilation, in which there is given not more of Dr. Stow's journal and correspondence than his personal and ministerial friends will be interested to read, but more than will be read by the general public. Those who expect to find in Mr. Beecher's "Life of Jesus" a contribution to history will be disappointed. It is not a life of Christ, it is Mr. Beecher's thoughts about Christ's life. It is analytical, metaphysical, subtile. Do not misunderstand us. It is not ministerial. There is no aspect about it suggesting the thought that it has been composed of old sermons and prayermeeting talks. Mr. Beecher's rhetoric is never rhetorical. His exhortations are never hortatory. Certainly in his "Life of Jesus" there is no professional sermonizing. It has not even so much of the sound of the pulpit as attaches to Dr. Hanna's "Life of Christ." Yet it is not a narrative of facts, illuminated by light shed on them from a minute and particular account of the past, but a careful, thoughtful probing of the gospel narrative, and a compendious comment on it, from one whose talent for historical research is less than his genius for spiritual insight. Measured as a biography, it deserves and will receive criticism for its constant digressions. It is the work of a man running over with affluence of thought, whose greatest difficulty is not to find what to say, but to determine what to omit. The third chapter steps aside from the narrative to discuss the character and person of Christ, the seventh to give an account of the various attempts to afford some portrait of him, the eighth to describe the moral and intellectual characteristics of his age. Half of the chapter on the Marriage at Cana of Galilee is devoted to a general discussion of the temperance question. In the account of the visit of Nicodemus to Jesus "by night" two pages are devoted to a general defense of the Jewish rabbi from the charge of cowardice. Judged by the ordinary standards, these digressions are a serious defect. They prevent that continuity of narrative which is essential to history, and utterly deprive the book of all dramatic power. But they will not render it less popular. The questions which Mr. Beecher turns aside to discuss are questions in which the public are interested, and his discussions they will eagerly read. On the whole, we judge the book will be in greater favor with the people than with the critics. The littérateurs will discover faults in its rhetoric, its logic, its artistic arrangement. They will find, perhaps, as much to criticise in his book as they have found in his preaching. The astute critic of the Saturday Review will find as many joints The Russo-American Telegraph and Explorin the harness here as he discovered in Har- ing Expeditions can hardly be esteemed a failper's edition of Beecher's Sermons. The theo- ure, since they have added so much to our knowllogians will find his theology faulty. They will edge of a before unknown country. Last of hasten to condemn anew the heresy which de- the books of travel, and we are inclined to nies Christ's double nature, and to prove once think the best, is RICHARD J. BUSH's journal, more, conclusively, how great is the fallacy published under the somewhat odd but signifiwhich asserts that the incarnation was simply cant title of Reindeer, Dogs, and Snow-Shoes the indwelling of the divine soul in a human (Harper and Brothers). It is far more interestbody. They will hardly accept without a protesting to the general reader than Mr. Dall's contri We could wish that more of our really best writers would follow the example of THOMAS HUGHES, and turn aside now and then from other, and possibly heavier and harder work, to instruct the children. He must be a dull boy who can read the history of Alfred the Great (James R. Osgood and Co.) without interest, and he yet more dull who can get through it without profit. It is a manly story of one who was in the highest sense of the term a great man. And though Mr. Hughes does not turn aside to deduce morals, he does not turn aside to avoid them. The true way to correct the wretched appetite which the average children's stories do so much to foster is by providing in just such books as this some better, healthier intellectual food.-Those who least like THEODORE PARKER may well welcome the second edition of his Historic Americans (Horace B. Fuller). There is little or nothing, either in philosophy or rhetoric, in its pages to remind one of a writer whose best work was done when he got farthest away from his German teachers, and wrote most out of his own resources. Franklin, Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson are the four portraits which make up the book. Without being, perhaps, absolutely exact, they are painted with an apparently scrupulous purpose to be honest and impartial. bution, and, though less humorous and sprightly, | agined, and well sustained throughout. But not less vivacious and more instructive than Mr. though the plot is the plot of a drama, the style Kennan's volume. It is very handsomely illus- is the style of a narrative. The men and women trated, too, which adds greatly to its interest, do not act their parts before us; the authoress and is accompanied by a map of the author's tells us how they acted. There is a consequent route, which adds greatly to its value. The lack of vividness and warmth and reality in the style is simple, clear, unostentatious, and wholly narrative, so that, despite its naturalness, the free from that double taint, egotism and exag- impress of the story-teller is never lost. Thus geration, which most travelers in new countries we find ourselves not so much carried along by find it so difficult to avoid, whether they narrate the current of the story as wondering why we their adventures about their own fireside to per- are not. The experiences depicted are neither sonal friends, or in the pages of a book to the unnatural nor of a kind unfitted to touch our general public. sympathies; and yet we read them untouched, because they do not live before us. The authoress has modeled her characters artistically, and has posed them gracefully; but she has not breathed into them the breath of life. We find HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN's Poet's Bazaar (Hurd and Houghton) a charming series of "pictures of travel in Germany, Italy, Greece, and the Orient." But the charm is indescribable, and we are not particularly surprised to find some very appreciative readers pronounce it dull. In truth, one either likes Hans Christian Andersen's writings without knowing why, or he finds it difficult to understand why any one should like them. It is as impossible to interpret to another the charm of his pen as it is to explain the listless enjoyment of resting on the bosom of a quiet river in the still twilight of a summer's evc. FICTION. In Pink and White Tyranny (Roberts Brothers) Mrs. STOWE presents the reverse side of the picture to that presented by John Stuart Mill in the "Subjection of Women. The pink and white tyrant is Lillie Ellis. She has deliberately formed her theory of the "sphere of woman" this, namely, that it is her place to be cared for and coddled, and man's place to care for and coddle her. Animated by this high and noble purpose, she marries John Seymour. Actuated by it, she inflicts upon him by her petty selfishness a series of unintentional persecutions, which make his life an intolerable burden. He fain would escape the despotism of his pink and white tyrant, but is too brave and too strong in principle to sunder by flight the tie which binds him to her, or to disregard the vow once taken "for better or for worse." At length his failure and her sickness work a change in Dillie, and, after devoting her life's energies to being nobody and Won-Not Wooed (Harper and Brothers) wooed us by its opening to an attentive reading, but failed to win us as the story went on. The description of "The Grand," in the first chapter, is the best thing in the book. As the story develops, the pleasant characters are, one after the other, bowed off the stage, until finally no one is left, except Mabel, in whom the reader has any special interest. The plot is after the most ap-doing nothing, she resolves on her sick-bed to be proved pattern of the modern novel, which pretty invariably marries the heroine to the wrong lover, by way of pleasant preparation for marriage to the right one. In "Won-Not Wooed" she is separated from her true-love by poverty, marries an indifferent husband from a sense of mistaken gratitude, and is persecuted by a third and disappointed aspirant to her hand, who is considerably more brutal than his bull-dog, and is quite as mad before the creature has given him the hydrophobia as afterward. Those who are inclined to sup upon horrors must have an insatiable appetite if the description of the fight between the two brutes, human and canine, and the subsequent wretched death of the wretched Horn, does not more than satisfy them. somebody and do something. But the resolution is too much for her; she dies in the effort; and he-why he, we are left to understand, lives happily ever afterward. Moral No. 1. Look before you leap. Moral No. 2. What can't be cured must be endured. In other words, reflect before marrying; but when once marriage is made, account it like the laws of the Medes and Persians-a something on no account to be broken. We commend the book very cordially to all pink and white tyrants, and to all their unhappy subjects, whether already captured or only partially entangled, with some hope of deliverance still left them. There is no more plot to Mrs. ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL's novel, The Island Neighbors (Harper and Brothers), than to Pickwick Papers, and hardly as much incident. An invalid, or a hypochondriac, perhaps a little of both, goes to the sea-shore-the location is not very definitely fixed-to spend the summer. The Mrs. CAROLINE CHESEBRO only lacks dramatic power to be a great novelist. Her last story, The Foe in the Household (James R. Osgood and Co.), barely falls short of the first rank, at least of American novels. The scene is laid in Pennsylvania. The characters are thorough-story is one of various scenes witnessed, and exly American; so is the plot, which turns upon the secret marriage of Delia, the daughter of a Mennonite bishop, to an outsider-an act which violates the rules of her order, and involves her in difficulties from which it takes many years to extricate her. The events which first involve her in this labyrinth, and finally extricate her from it, are well conceived, and so simply, naturally evolved, one from the other, that all sense of romancing is taken away. The characters, too, though not remarkable for any wonderful traits, either of virtue or of vice, are well im periences suffered and enjoyed, by his household and their "island neighbors." There are one or two exciting adventures, and there is just enough of love-making and love-quarreling between two of the characters to supply a reasonable amount of that necessary flavoring of all romances. The movement of the story is, however, exceedingly quiet, or rather, to speak more accurately, it has no movement. One incident succeeds another without any particular connection, very much as they do in real life. The story is like the organ-playing which we hear so |